


All the Good Things

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 15:34:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1653695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You hear the idea for the first time when you’re sixteen, at school the day before Thanksgiving. “Write down the good things,” your history professor says. “Hang onto them. There’s always something to be grateful for.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Good Things

You hear the idea for the first time when you’re sixteen, at school the day before Thanksgiving. “Write down the good things,” your history professor says. “Hang onto them. There’s always something to be grateful for.”

The next day, you write “no turkey dinner but we’re all still alive” on a scrap of paper and drop it into a jar, screw the lid on tight so the sentiment can’t escape. It feels good, like something you can throw in the face of the days you’re convinced you’re falling apart.

You keep up the charade through four more history professors, adding anything you can think of: “saved a kid today and her smile was the cutest thing ever” and “had fantastic pie at this mom and pop place in the middle of nowhere” and “dad was home for xmas this year” and “Sammy getting straight As in spite of it all.”

The practice comes to a halt in mid-February, your jar already half full. You arrive home from school elated and careless, and your father catches you adding one of those cheesy Valentines to your collection, “made out with nearly half the class today, 8 girls, 3 guys, new record” scrawled on the back. He doesn’t speak as he picks it up, just tosses the contents into the fire and walks out, and you can hear the jar shatter and car door slam through the too-thin walls. It says enough.

After that, you start a different sort of collection: “too slow today, can’t save them all” and “sick and tired of food from cans and greasy diners” and “don’t much see the point in celebrating Easter, anyway” and “failed another test, big surprise.” You write these things on your heart, tuck them into the spaces between your ribs, store them in your lungs, swallow them whole and let your body break them apart, absorb them into your blood.

You meet him a few deaths and a dozen years of disillusionment later. “Good things do happen, Dean,” he says, and you want to crumple up his faith and hide it away, hang onto it for future reference, but you can’t seem to find any room for it amongst the disappointments.

You return to the site the next day, the torn up soil, the brittle grass, the flattened trees. “I’m not dead,” you say, letting the words fall into your open grave.

You walk away, earth crunching beneath your feet like broken glass.


End file.
